Babylon

After viewing this film and then reading the general reaction from critics, I couldn’t help but come to the defense (not that it cares for or needs it) of this movie. Damien Chazelle’s epic on the early stages of Hollywood and the transition to sound is, like a muddled cocktail order of it’s star Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), equal parts reenactment, homage, escape, and sometimes parody.

Starting off in 1926, in a time when the pictures were silent and absent of color, we’re thrown into the midst of a loud and vibrantly colorful party thrown during the production of the aforementioned Conrad’s latest silent epic. With the party’s obscenity and chaos, Babylon pulls you in (somewhat grotesquely) and doesn’t let you go for most of it’s 189 minute runtime. It’s a grand exercise in escapism, a diversion from the world, that much like it’s characters in the movie say, is one of the main things people love about films, and can be thought of as, the whole point of them.

Amid the drugs, sex, dancing, and exotic animals, a “nobody” actress, Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie) cons her way into the party with the help of a worker, Manny Torres (Diego Calva) who himself is dreaming of entering the film industry. And once these two bypass the literal and figurative “Gates” of Hollywood, their ascent and descent is the roaring rollercoaster which this film is founded on. To say this movie is opulent would be an understatement, but much like the reality of the time (or at least the “legends” about the reality of the time) the Wild West nature of a burgeoning industry is on full display. The excessive drinking, completely unsafe working conditions, and a “get it done by any means necessary” approach to producing films. In that, we also see the freedom and openness of this Bohemian lifestyle, before the double edge sword of regulations came in (in the late 20’s two priests would draft the foundation for what became the Hays Code, a document for censorship and restrictions in the film industry) there was an acceptance to whomever could get the job done, regardless of gender, race, or sexual orientation. LaRoy’s star-making scene is directed by a woman, Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li) is a lesbian title-writer (an important but soon to be discarded position in the industry), and Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo) is a black trumpet player who is a staple at these parties and eventual big studio asset.

Like a morning after these bacchanal times, the hangover hits hard and during this point is where the movie turns heel and pivots into a darker area, an area that these raucous stars aren’t prepared for, as a paradigm shift into sound pictures, “talkies”, flips the world of these stars on it’s axis. With the emergence of Al Jolson’s talking picture The Jazz Singer, quickly LaRoy and Conrad’s character’s are struggling with their transition to sound. One of the best scene’s in Babylon is the depiction of the struggles of filiming with early sound where even the slightest sneeze, opening of a door, movement of heavy shoes, or a surgical pin in an ankle can ruin an entire take. Chazelle conducts a comically frustrating and anxiety building scene where LaRoy struggles to adapt to this new process. And Manny, himself now a top executive, painstakingly attempts to keep up with this transition as the psyche of the film’s stars unravel before us.

The main critique I’ve seen with Babylon hinges on this point, that these characters are too stereotypical and that their demise is telegraphed to us to a point where we see it coming and don’t get much else involving who these characters were as people, and thus we miss out on receiving a full arc of these character’s journey. But I believe this is the point of the entire movie, that these stereotypical characters; an aging movie star, a nobody actress’s quick ascent and drug addled descent, once prominent staples of the industry being forced to hide their true selves, and a panicking executive desperate to keep it all together, is intentionally stereotypical. Because Chazelle is showing that in film, the character or “star” is a conjured up image, they don’t exist as a person, it doesn’t matter who they are or what they think should come of it, there will be countless others after them as the Hollywood machine keeps rolling in perpetuity. They want to be seen as individuals, but the machine in which they exist will cut and replace anyone. So we shouldn’t care as the viewer who these people were deep down, because the film industry doesn’t care, and never did.

This is aptly put by Elinor St. John (Jean Smart) when she tells a fading Conrad that “there will be 100 more Jack Conrads.” They are part of something bigger, one of the main attractions that motivated them to get into the industry in the first place. Nobody cares about the person, only the “star” and the star is not a person but an ideal, and they will continue to fill that star role with someone else, until that person is done, and then fill it again with another. The light shines, and then it fades. There’s no reason why, it’s just time, a natural course of time that no actor or actress no matter how much they want to hold onto it, can resist.

As it wraps up, the feeling of meaninglessness, and nihilism is apparent. With the wondrous fantasy the film world provides, others will clamor to bypass it’s gates in deeper and more desperate ways then can be imagined. This is shown by the appearance of James McKay (Tobey McGuire) as a mob boss with a few “movie ideas of his own” taking Manny into a Dante’s Inferno type “party” where they descend into increasing depravity until a monstrous character from the woods of Oregon eats a rat while McKay exclaims excitingly that they “will do anything for money!” while throwing crumpled up cash at him. As long as they can be given attention, fame, and fortune, people will go to the figurative and literal depths of hell to be seen, and our characters will be forgotten.

But they were, and are, real people, they had hopes and dreams and spoke and felt. A returning Manny, long gone from his time with the studio, breaks down when recollecting on the time he spent in the film industry and the people he met and interacted with are now long gone. He’s nostalgic for the bygone era and bereft with a wave of sadness knowing he can never get it back, can never get those people back, and that no-one but him and those that were around will know these people. Until he hears it, and sees it (in a showing of 1952’s Singin in the Rain, itself a depiction on the transition from silent to sound films), not the people he knew and loved, but the characters or “stars” that they helped create and fill. He sees an actress struggling to change her voice for sound films (LaRoy), an aging actor being laughed at for the awkward diction of his speech (Conrad), he sees the stereotype, not the human that existed.

In the final moments, Chazelle takes us on a brief ride through the visual history of film starting from the novel minimalism of it’s birth all the way to the expansiveness of today with it’s grandness and technicality. And this is the main thread in the whole film, that as it gets changed from silent to sound, analog to digital, black and white to color, and whatever else technological advances will come to the filmmaking process, that there exists something that cannot be changed. The intricacies of a story, of an idea, and of a character. They will be immortalized by the inspiration they provide for the future. Just as they did for the characters of this film, actors will look back on Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie and study them to don the star image for their film in the years ahead, producers will battle time and money to get these films done, parties will be had, nobodies will be found, stars will be replaced. Film is a collective art, a perpetual story, moving through time.

Directed By: Damien Chazelle

Starring: Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva

Runtime: 189 minutes Year Released: 2022